Man in the Middle Voice MARTIN CLASSICAL LECTURES
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Man in the Middle Voice MARTIN CLASSICAL LECTURES New Series, Volume 1 The Martin Classical Lectures are delivered annually at Oberlin College on a foundation established by his many friends in honor of Charles Beebe Martin, for forty-five years a teacher of classical literature and classical art in Oberlin. Man in the Middle Voice NAME AND NARRATION IN THE ODYSSEY John Peradotto PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright 0 1990 by Trustees of Oberlin College Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford All Rights Reserved Libra7 of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Peradotto, John Man in the middle voice : name and narration in the Odyssey / John Peradotto. p. cm.-(Martin classical lectures ; new ser., v. 1) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Homer. Odyssey. 2. Odysseus (Greek mythology) in literature. 3. Names, Personal, in literature. 4. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. 11. Series. PA25.M3 new ser., vol. 1 [PA4 1671 883.0 1-dc20 90-34569 ISBN 0-69 1-06830-5 (alk. paper) This book has been composed in Linotron Baskerville Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 13579108642 For Erin, Monica, Noreen, and Nicole "MSABU,what is there in books?" As an illustration, I told him the story from the Odyssey of the hero and Polyphemus, and of how Odysseus had called himself Noman, had put out Polyphemus' eye, and had escaped tied up under the belly of a ram. "How did he," he asked, "say the word, Noman, in his own language? Say it." "He said Outis," I told him. "He called himself Outis, which in his language means Noman." "Must you write about the same thing?" he asked me. "No," I said, "people can write of anything they like. I might write of you." Kamante who had opened up in the course of the talk, here suddenly closed again, he looked down himself and asked me in a low voice, what part of him I would write about. "I might write about the time when you were ill and were out with the sheep on the plain," I said, "what did you think of then?" His eyes wandered over the room, up and down; in the end he said vaguely: "Sejui7-I know not. "Were you afraid?" I asked him. After a pause, "Yes," he said firmly, "all the boys on the plain are afraid sometimes." "Of what were you afraid?" I said. Kamante stood silent for a little while, his face became collected and deep, his eyes gazed inward. Then he looked at me with a little wry grimace: "Of Outis," he said. "The boys on the plain are afraid of Outis." -1sak Dinesen, Out of Africa CONTENTS Preface CHAPTER1 Polysemantor: Texts, Philology, Ideology CHAPTER2 Polyainos: Myth vs. Folktale CHAPTER3 Polytlm: The Ends of the Odyssey CHAPTER4 Polytropos: The Naming of the Subject CHAPER5 Po,!'yarbtos: The Unhallowed Name of Odysseus CHAPTER6 Outis: The Noman-clature of the Self Index of Homeric Passages Index of Greek Words Index of Names and Subjects PREFACE xotapoi~tois a6toi~tpPaIvop6v TE nai o6n kp~aivoprv,~ipCv TE xai 06%~'1p~v. -Heraclitus, frag. 49a DK Located at the crossroads of different traditions (philosophical, logical, and linguistic), the concept of subject is difficult to handle and gives rise to numerous ambiguities. -A. J. Greimas and J. Courtks, Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary IF PART of the argument in the following pages did not so vigorously challenge what Roland Barthes calls "the ideol- ogy of the person," the conventional view of the stable sub- ject, of consistency and continuity of character, and of its actions and products, I would use conventional language and simply say "this book has been rewritten many times." But even the unreflective language of convention here barely masks its own paradoxes: how can we refer to this book as "this book" if "it" has been rewritten? What is the stable "it" that has come through the rewriting intact? Old- fashioned philosophical questions, but to answer them here would be to anticipate a dense and difficult argu- ment. At this point, let them merely stand, as bait to those who relish such questions and as irritant to those who do not, advance notice of the problems of naming and of nar- ration that figure so largely in what follows. Yet, despite the inconsistency, I must say that this book has been rewritten many times. There is at least a useful fiction, a phenomenal truth here that must be stated. There has, indeed, been a continuous project, an identifi- able folder in my file, however often its labels and contents have changed. for longer than I could menti011 lrithout embarr~~ssmmt.The labels and conte~ltshave c-hi1ngt.d ~rirhits :i~lthor'spredispositions. ;111d those predisp~siti~~l~ with the conceptuill cli~llntear~~und him. The excursus on the discipline of clnssical studies in Chapter 1 attempts to define these changes n11d introduces the nlethodological fr~melrorkfor this pnrticulnr rending of the O(~Y.V.WY.- - But long ago the project begin more n;li\.elv, lvith \-en little of thnt intense reflection on the d\.nami~-sof text pmduction ,~ndassinlilntion which characterizes current literc~r\.nnal- \.sis. It hega11 nlodestl~and microtext~iall\-as n half-page note on the d XE ("until") clnuse in Otivs.~rv. 11.122 and the conditions that surround it in Tiresins's prophec~.I 1,-iunted tc) articulate tht~definiti\.e rrciding of this text. oiPer- turning and excluding what had gone before. an aspira- tion fostered in me b\. nn\. yhilologicnl tr;~iningand b\. the lcinds then pre\-ailingin the profession. Further reflection prompted :I groltving suspicion that the way this mic~-otest \\-asrend could become a nlndel nlapprd onto the ivhole, resulting in n picture of the O~Y.T.T~~Y-.as a collision of empir- icnl nnrrative traditions, one donninated b\. m?.t11 and an- other bl .\liirchun. But e1.m thus enlarged the goal was still n Illore or less prescriptive iind univocal I-eading. I shall not here trace in detail the process \vlnereb~vthe word Ye- finiti\.e" faded from m\- critical \.oc;lbular\.. or how so pos- itii-ist nn undertnking ,ielded to a more dialectical. theo- I-eticall\.open enterprise. or hmv thnt barren urlivocity was esch;u~gedfor- n less domineering i-ielt.of I-ending, but the reasons \\.ll\. it happened will be clear to see. especiallj*in Chapter- 1. This book has bee11 rewritten ninnJ7tirlles. And if' I had 11ot stopped ~vherethis book concludes. it would haire con- tinued to be I-elvritten. sguin cind ngaiu. Like its subject. the Od\~s.ct.v. - in the reading here nd\*anced.it counter-feits n co~iclusion.but does not reall?. end. As Pnul Zunlthor 113s said, "Nothing in li~yedI-eality is closed." and so a book tllat quietl~.contests stable subjects arld obdurate definitions must ;11so place in doubt the finalit\. of endings (as it does PREFACE xiii most particularly in Chapter 3). In two fairly obvious senses at least, this book does not end. It has engendered in its author a host of fresh issues organically connected to this study and readily inferable by other professional read- ers of the Odyssey, but left on the drawing board for future elucidation. In that sense, it records the prolonged refine- ment of a cutting instrument that has still left the surface little more than merely scratched. It will, however, or so it is my hope, provoke its readers to take its bare suggestions as a prompt either to counterpoise or to continue the read- ing they find here. This study may strike literary analysts outside the field of classical studies as less sophisticated than it could be, given the state of theoretical discussion. That is in part be- cause it is designed largely for my colleagues in a profes- sion long suspicious of theory and impatient, often justifi- ably so, with the self-indulgence and needless obscurity that too frequently blemishes its exercise. This book is, in part, a special plea for an enlarged definition of classical philology to include tools for textual exegesis not yet fully countenanced in the traditional repertoire, and so the rhe- torical tone of this plea, guided by a genuine desire to communicate and to persuade, had to be chosen with ut- most diplomacy. On the other hand, I have tried con- stantly to keep in mind the needs of nonspecialists, whose theoretical disappointments with what they find here may be counterbalanced, I hope, by a reading that brings them a philologst's heed of subtle and crucial discriminations of lexical and grammatical texture that will easily elude even the most scrupulous attention to gross narrative in a trans- lated text. Writing of this kind, like life itself, takes place mainly in the middle voice. I feel less like author than congeries or conduit, so great is the host of family, friends, colleagues, students, and institutions with a part in the production of this book. If this book were perfectly consistent both with this realization and with its own misgivings about "the ide- ology of the person" and the proprietary claims attending it, its author I\-ould have had to remain anonvrnous. But scholar1)- reading at its best is. I belie\-e.